Yammer adds email features to messaging service

San Francisco—Enterprise social network company Yammer Inc. has updated its collaboration service to allow users to include non-Yammer members in discussions via an email tool within the application. Yammer, owned by Microsoft Corp., enables private collaborative communications within organizations or designated groups. It functions similarly to such social collaboration tools as Salesforce.com Inc.'s Chatter and Jive Software's Jive Engage.

With the new email integration, Yammer users can communicate with non-users by typing their email addresses into the CC bar of any message. The recipient can reply via email, with the message being posted into the Yammer discussion, the company said in a statement. Yammer also has assigned a single email address to each Yammer group, allowing a participant to send an email and its attachments to a group for posting within a Yammer discussion.